The Price We Pay
by RiddlePanda
Summary: The two boys finally got what they wanted, but the consequences were just too much...


**The Price We Pay**

I cried. I admit I cried after reading this. And I wrote it. That's sad. Hopefully you can tell who the characters are by the end, but if not, I will reveal them. I actually wrote this before a friend left, and wasn't intending on posting this but she wanted it and I didn't want to just email it to her.

I have no idea what I was thinking when I wrote this so I have no funny thing to say.

I own nothing except a sad warped mind.

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I stroked the young blonde haired alchemist's back in soothing motions. He slowly calmed down from the fit he had had just a few moments before and soon was asleep again. I sighed and moved him so he was on his pillow and not in my lap and, taking a seat on the edge of the bed, began to run my fingers through his hair. I remembered the day he came here. Pride was the one to bring him here. He had rescued him from the military laboratory that dealt mainly with criminals, a real rouge place Pride had told me. He also told me he was sorry he hadn't gotten there in time. Maybe he could have saved the brother as well. He had taken a liking to the boys throughout the years. Later Pride had gotten the lab reports back on the brothers. To think they had actually succeeded on finding a real, pure Philosopher's Stone and used it to regain their bodies…

The boy sleeping, shifts and nudges closer to my hand. I read the reports Pride got. None of the others wanted to bother with them, but I had to know. This almost brotherly gut feeling tugged at me saying I had to know what they went through before Pride rescued him. It was their friend that ratted on them. If he weren't already dead, I'd kill him. Their friend wanted to become Fuhrer, to take Pride's place. That's how Pride knew where to find the boys, their friend told him as he tried to kill him. Well, he apparently didn't know we couldn't die, but humans, humans die so easily and quick. Pride finished with him in seconds then took off for that lab, but by the time he got there, it was too late. He told me he barely got this one out. The other one was already dead.

The reports, I never told the boy what was contained in them. He already knew what they had done to him, I didn't want him to know what they did to his brother, the brother he always protected until the end, when they used that Stone. They regained their lost bodies, one, an arm and leg and the other, his entire body. They then confided in their friend, the one that Pride killed, that they did it, and in order to up his status, he told his higher ups about their attempts at human transmutation, about their search, about them finding and using it, everything. He got a promotion, they got captured and tortured.

To the one that's alive, they beat him, raped him, interrogated him. There were still healing bruises on the boy's body, even after a few weeks later. He already knew his brother was dead when Pride got him. When his brother died, they showed him. The pictures in the reports…there wouldn't even be anything to bring back if we could bring him back, not even his soul. Even though I wasn't there, I have this feeling it shattered. There was no way to bring it back. Even the boy's mind…The reports said they had done ten times the damage to the dead one than the one sleeping in my gaze. There wouldn't even be a way to bring him back as a Homunculus, nothing is left of that boy to bring back anywhere.

But we shouldn't dwell on the past should we? I am slowly realizing this as I take care of the boy that's alive. I was so bent on revenge on both of them, but it flew out the door when I saw the battered, unconscious body of the sleeping angel lying in the bed I'm sitting on. Father's gone, one of my "brothers" is gone but this one is still here, if you call this life here. Once he had woken up, I could tell something was wrong. He wasn't the same person I had known for the few years I knew him. In a couple of days I figured it out. He lost his mind. I'm guessing it was when they showed him his brother, the brother that took care of him, the brother he took care of, because they were all they had. His mind probably went to the place his brother went, too deep, too far in the Gate, that no one, not even our bastard father if he were here, could reach.

He hardly ever talks, hardly eats, and lately, has been having horrible nightmares only I can calm him down from. I don't mind though. It's my way of apologizing for what I did to them in the past. The others don't want to deal with him anymore. We all thought Sloth could help, considering she was made from their mother, but it didn't work, neither would me changing into his brother, he already knows his brother's dead, no way to bring him back, so me being the other brother to him wouldn't faze him. He would know it was me.

I look around and see a picture on the dresser. I pick it up. It's a crayon drawing of a large silver thing and a person with a silver arm and leg. He keeps drawing the same picture day after day or stare out the window, repeating the name of his deceased sibling. I feel tears well up in my eyes. I just wish things could be the way they were, before the damned Stone. Maybe, just maybe, we could have been a family. I kiss my sleeping little brother softly on the forehead before making my way to the door. Just before I leave, I turn around to gaze at him one last time before I return to bed. "Goodnight, Alphonse."

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Meh. That's all I can say. This story is dark and I want to keep it that way so no funny crap. The characters are of course Alphonse and Envy.

Just….review…. It might make me feel happier to have posted this.


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